Transformational grammar

In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of defined operations (called transformations) to produce new sentences from existing ones.

The method is commonly associated with the American linguist Noam Chomsky's biologically oriented concept of language. But in logical syntax, Rudolf Carnap introduced the term "transformation" in his application of Alfred North Whitehead's and Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica. In such a context, the addition of the values of one and two, for example, transform into the value of three; many types of transformation are possible.[1]

Generative algebra was first introduced to general linguistics by the structural linguist Louis Hjelmslev,[2] although the method was described before him by Albert Sechehaye in 1908.[3] Chomsky adopted the concept of transformation from his teacher Zellig Harris, who followed the American descriptivist separation of semantics from syntax. Hjelmslev's structuralist conception including semantics and pragmatics is incorporated into functional grammar.[4]

  1. ^ {{cite book|author=Carnap, Rudolph |title=Philosophy and Logical Syntax |publisher=AMS Press |year=1935}
  2. ^ Seuren, Pieter A. M. (1998). Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-20891-7.
  3. ^ Seuren, Pieter (2018). Saussure and Sechehaye: Myth and Genius. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-37815-5.
  4. ^ Butler, Christopher S. (2003). Structure and Function: A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories, part 1 (PDF). John Benjamins. ISBN 9781588113580. Retrieved 2020-01-19.